Police fail to trace men who burnt boy alive

New Delhi, March 15 (IANS) Police teams probing the gruesome killing of a 10-year-old boy, burnt alive in the capital two days ago, were Saturday clueless about the assailants and failed to make any headway in their investigations. “We are still clueless. Neither the victim’s bicycle and his belongings nor the white Qualis car has been recovered yet,” a senior investigating police officer told IANS on condition of anonymity.

Sanjeev was set on fire Thursday evening when he asked for compensation from members of a wedding party who were travelling in a car that hit his bicycle in Sungurpur village on the Delhi-Haryana border.

“We have recovered an alcohol bottle from the scene of crime and we are examining it. We are hoping to retrieve fingerprints from the bottle, as it could possibly yield some vital clues,” the official added.

Video footage obtained from the groom’s party in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, also disappointed the crime investigating teams. “We have found no clue after examining the marriage video footage.”

Police said nobody was put under detention Saturday and no eyewitness had approached them yet.

According to villagers, when Sanjeev demanded that they pay for his damaged bicycle, the enraged men in the car first thrashed him and then dragged him 150-200 metres to a field.

The men, who were reportedly drunk, tied his legs and hands and then dumped him on a heap of cow-dung patties and set him ablaze.

The villagers spotted the flames and rushed to douse the fire. They found the boy charred from head to toe.

Police Saturday did not rule out the possibility that the boy might have been sodomised before being set ablaze.

“We have not received the autopsy report yet, but the chances of a sexual assault are very rare. We are probing the matter from all possible angles,” the official said.

The investigating officials also hinted at the role of an insider behind the incident.

Following the discovery of the boy’s body, hundreds of villagers had stormed the wedding venue and tried to vandalise it though most guests had left. The mob of over 200 men damaged windowpanes of some cars parked nearby.

The angry villagers then staged a demonstration outside the Alipur police station, blaming the police for letting the attackers escape.

They shouted slogans against the police and blocked the Delhi-Chandigarh highway for three hours.